eew, my toe is delaminating

The skin on the bottom is falling off.

William Poundstone, Labyrinths of Reason

This is a book of paradoxes and philosophical thought experiments: grue-bleen, non-white un-ravens, Twin Earth and the Voynich manuscript, the Chinese Room, the unexpected hanging, Newcomb's paradox, et cetera. If many of these are new, you're in for a treat. Even if you're familiar with these ideas, I bet you'll find some interesting variants, related questions, or historical notes.

For example, in psychology there is the possibility of an "experimenter bias effect" -- even in well-controlled experiments, you find what you expect to find. Poundstone says meta-experiments have in fact been performed to determine whether this is a significant effect, and the meta-experiments disagree. Charmingly, their results seem to depend on the expectation of the meta-experimenter.

Or, did you know that Leibniz gave a thought experiment not very different from Searle's?

Moreover, it must be avowed that perception and what depends upon it cannot possibly be explained by mechanical reasons, that is, by figure and movement. Supposing that there be such a machine, the structure of which produces thinking, feeling, and perceiving; imagine this machine enlarged but preserving the same proportions, so that you might enter it as if it were a mill. This being supposed, you might enter its inside; but what would you observe there? Nothing but parts which push and move each other, and never anything that could explain perception.

A fun book for anyone who has a taste for gnawing at the roots of reason. Say what? I think it's bedtime.